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Monday, September 5, 2016

Convos With my Ten-year-old Self--Dating and Men

I'm going to continue with a new thing I'm doing. Namely, conversations with my ten-year-old self. If I had a time machine, I'd go back and tell myself a few gems of wisdom. Today I'm talking about husbands/men/dates:

1. You need to learn to be your own knight in shining armor. You aren't necessarily going to marry someone who wants to take on that duty. Sad but true. He may have other dragons to slay at any given time that you're facing one. And who knows, he might be breeding baby dragons at work or under the bed somewhere.

2. Learn how to talk so that he'll talk too. It gets old having to provide both parts of the conversation sometimes, and there are wooden dummies for that. The thing is, you need to have a voice too. Don't let a charge of "nagging" ever stick. That's a cop-out and a way to silence you. Stand up for your own voice right from the start.

3. You aren't going to live happily ever after like a fairytale. It's going to be lots of hard work and sometimes you're going to want to whack him with a shovel. Or a skillet. In his sleep. But of course you won't, because it's frowned upon. And dents your skillet.

5. Work on your own flaws first. Figure out your triggers and shoot them down. Fix things with your father so you don't take those suitcases into your future. They're really heavy. Understand that you're going to marry someone a whole lot like him, so you need the practice.

6. Learn how to do difficult, unpleasant, and repetitive things for the joy of serving your family. He'll have to go to work every day and you're going to feel mighty guilty if you spend your days sitting around watching TV and eating bon bons (I don't think I've ever had one of those). And he'll resent you for it and it'll breed dragons. Or contention.

7. Develop a habit of counting the good things about a person, not just their faults and the things about them that drive you insane. Otherwise you'll spend much of your time being annoyed and insane.

8. Lay it all out there from the beginning how you mean to proceed. You're going to want to talk, and to develop a way of doing cleaning chores and a few hundred other things that need to get done. If you start out being okay with inch thick layers of dust on his things in your bedroom, you'll NEVER get him to change that. In fact, some of those dust bunnies have great great great great grandbunnies.

9. Never, never forget how wonderful and giddy it felt to be in that first blush of love. You're going to need that feeling when you're having an altercation or up at three am pumping breast milk for a baby who won't suck.

10. Learn to like to cook well and to develop menus for the month. You always have to eat. You might as well eat well and save yourself the daily dilemma of what to feed your family.

11. Get organized. It saves so much time that you could be otherwise spending doing real, fun stuff. Disorganization means you have to spend valuable reading time finding, caring for, preparing extra for, and dispensing with, messes.

12. Do bucket list things early instead of being so worried about finding a guy during college. Go back to Europe. Take those movies of folk dancers and singers. Write everything down. Experience it all while your knees still work. Dance hard. Ride hard. Play with swords more. Go on a mission. Go places un-looked-for and virgin. Breathe in beauty. Breathe.

12. Be intrepid. Do more things that scare you and take your breath away. You'll need the stories for later, and of course they'll all need to be true. You do some things and have great experiences. Do more.

13. Remember to enjoy life the age you are right now. And every age. Later might sound all rosy, but its got its poisonous slugs and poo piles.

14. You should know that some day you'll actually have your own dog, write lots of books, have six kids, win 3rd place in a nation-wide sword-fighting tournament, swim with sharks, watch eagles up close, sing in Carlsbad Caverns, go caving, go to Ireland and back to Europe and Alaska and several other places. You'll love and laugh and anguish and plan and worry and live.

15. Try to develop more common ground than just sword-fighting. He'll move on to computer games from there rather quickly, and those are hard to play with him.

16. Support him even when he fails to support you. Maybe it'll rub off.

17. Don't ever complain if he complements you. Just tell him thank you and revel in it. And keep every single thing he ever writes to you.

18. Be excellent.

19. Just love him. He isn't recycle-able and thus toss-able. When you make that final decision to say I do, you have to know what all comes with that so that later you don't say, "I don't," or "I wish I hadn't." This is for all the marbles, Baby. Make sure he knows that too.

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The Heart of Fire book pic

The Heart of Fire

The Heart of Fire text

Viscount Sir Edward Marchmont's new wife, Bernadette, is spending his money like water. Unbeknown to her, he takes the family gem, a huge ruby called Heart of Fire, to pay for his gambling debts. On the way to his creditor, however, Edward loses the jewel. In a fit of despair, he throws himself from Blackfriars Bridge, plunging his family into poverty of the rankest sort.

With a heart harder than any ruby, Bernadette abandons her stepchildren to a life on the streets of London. Sarah and Josiah are forced to make their living by dragging flotsam from the banks of the Thames to sell for food. Sarah cares for several street urchins, while her young brother goes to work for a gang, cleaning chimneys and acting as a paid mourner-both covers for a theft ring.

Handsome law clerk Andrew Witherwood seems to be Sarah's champion, despite the fact that Bernadette has retained his services. When rumors of the ruby resurface, greedy treasure hunters will stop at nothing to get their hands on it. Kidnapping, theft, betrayal, and murder are all on the table. Sarah must find someone she can trust before it's too late.

Purchase links for The Heart of Fire

Summerhouse pic

Summerhouse text

A summerhouse isn’t usually the place to pick up cute girls. Jack Harris, curator of the Pennington Estate for England’s National Trust, not only meets a girl where he works, but she is the famous Pennington heiress, missing for two hundred years. Somehow their lives collide in the gazebo after dark. Jack soon finds he can’t get Charlotte and the mystery surrounding her life out of his head and heart. Charlotte knows she can’t marry her parents’ choice—the man is doltish. She must tell them she wishes instead to marry an incorporeal man with the words “Do not disturb: I’m disturbed enough already” written on what appears to be his undershirt. Jack can’t impress Charlotte’s unbending parents without scaring them witless, as they think he is a ghost. Jack pursues her across Europe, racing time itself and hoping to catch her when she falls. But time can be unpredictable.

Reviews for SUMMERHOUSE

Links for Summerhouse

Sunrise pic

Sunrise

When champion barrel racer Tamsin Tucker is seriously injured at a rodeo, her whole world crashes around her. She is abandoned in a tiny Utah town, where her leg is amputated to save her life. Tamsin's horse is gone, she has no family, and she feels God has forsaken her. Prospects are bleak.

Through what she later realizes is divine intervention, Tamsin finds friendship with her nurse, Sarah, and Travis Mayfield, the handsome doctor who saves her life. Sarah has her own problems, but a faith that Tamsin can't deny. Travis has ghosts of his own and must learn to trust in God as well.

Getting on her feet isn't going to be easy for Tamsin. But with a newfound purpose, the help of friends, a man who adores her, and the matchless love of her Heavenly Father, she will forge a new life.

Small Deceptions

Francesca Kennington merely wants to be left to her studies, despite her mother's best efforts to saddle her with a rich husband. Then she meets a mysterious gentleman, who leads her on a romp through the ballrooms and countryside of Georgian England. Their romance blossoms but secrets cause Francesca's house of cards to tumble. She must find a way to put her life back together, while still following her heart.

"I have to tell you how much I enjoyed Small Deceptions. I hunkered down with it for two days and devoured it. I would like a Daniel Stirling, please?"Jeri Crews

"Heidi...as you know, Lori Taylor gave a copy of your novel, Small Deceptions, to Liam McCurry for Christmas. I finally got it away from him...and want you to know how much I enjoyed it. To be truthful, I have never been a great Jane Austen fan and found the "non-crazy world" setting and language difficult...for at least the first 5 pages! Then I really got into the story and loved it. Thanks for your writing skills, lady! Keep 'em coming!" Margie McCurrySmall DeceptionsBy: H. Linn Murphy